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I listen to a lot of New Order, and I’ve noticed certain phrases that pop up in multiple songs: “in a lonely place”, “this time of night”, “you just can’t believe”. So, naturally, I decided to analyze New Order song lyrics to see what else I could find. I included the song title as part of the lyrics (since New Order often doesn’t) and didn’t consider phrases that spanned multiple lines. I found all the phrases of at least four words that appear in at least two songs. I eliminated near-duplicates and the less interesting. Here they are, along with their songs and the lines they appear in. My favorites are at the top.

“THIS TIME OF NIGHT”
– As It Is When It Was: The streets are so empty at this time of night
– This Time Of Night: This Time Of Night

“IN A LONELY PLACE”
– Face Up: It’s dieing in a lonely place
– In A Lonely Place: In A Lonely Place

“YOU JUST CAN’T BELIEVE”
– Confusion: You just can’t believe me
– Love Vigilantes: You just can’t believe

“HOW DOES IT FEEL”
– Blue Monday: Tell me how does it feel
– Someone Like You: How does it feel

“YOU WERE HERE WITH ME”
– In A Lonely Place: How I wish you were here with me now
– I’ve Got A Feeling: I’d say it to your face if you were here with me,

“WHERE WE HAVE BEEN”
– State Of The Nation: I think about where we have been
– Weirdo: I don’t care where we have been

“DOWN ON MY KNEES AND”
– Bizarre Love Triangle: I get down on my knees and pray
– Denial: To fall down on my knees and resume this charade

“I CAME TO YOU”
– Angel Dust: With open arms I came to you
– Shellshock: I came to you, I called in vain

“IN THE END YOU”
– Face Up: But in the end you lost your friend
– Sub-Culture: In the end you will submit
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Overview

It’s much easier to define a one-hit wonder than the king of pop: a song by an artist who never hit the charts with another song in their careers. The biggest would be the one that spent the most time at the top of the charts; for my purposes, I’m counting weeks in the top ten. I analyzed my data to find songs by artists who never appeared for another song. However, since I don’t have full weekly top 40 or top 100 data, I had to take the top candidates and manually check for other hits. Here are the top one-hit wonders. Clearly, we have three definite winners; two of them are exactly what I think of when I think “one-hit wonder”.

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Overview

In trying to determine the king of pop, I explored a number of questions that I cut from the final post to keep the length at merely unwieldy. Below I consider several digressions from my main king of pop analysis.

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Overview

One of the first questions about pop music that occurred to me was: is Michael Jackson truly the king of pop, as he was often called? If not Michael, who is the true king¹ of pop? At an intuitive level, it seemed to me that being the king broke down to two main factors: the king should have the most hit songs of all time, and the king should have been a dominant presence on the charts for many years, such that you could barely listen to pop music without hearing one or another of his or her songs.

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Like many, I was deeply immersed in pop when I was growing up (for me, the 80s). I then abandoned it for more esoteric stuff for a while, spending the 90s mostly listening to industrial, techno, and electronica. In the last ten years or so, I’ve returned to pop with a new appreciation for the genius of a perfectly crafted pop song.

When I came back to pop, I formed a couple of crotchety-old-man theories about how contemporary pop differs from its forebears. I’m a cautious person though, so before ranting about the kids today, I decided to collect some data and test my theories. The result is an exploration of the last 50 years of pop songs. As it happens, I haven’t yet finished my original driving question about pop song meaning; my explorations of “popularity” are linked below.

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